杨柳：湖北经济学院选手，第17届21世纪杯全国英语演讲比赛三等奖获得者。

个人简介：女，湖北经济学院外国语学院大三学生，爱笑，爱生活，善于发现生活中的美。爱演讲，享受每一次演讲的过程和快乐，并通过参加各种规格的比赛，不断提升自己，超越自己。闲余时间，我喜欢看美剧，听音乐，打羽毛球，享受美食。高中时十分迷恋《疯狂英语》，也就是那个时候知道了21世纪，那个时候就幻想自己能够成为众多选手中的一个。希望在四月份的半决赛，决赛中展现出自己最好的一面。

演讲稿：

Today, I would like to begin my speech with a story. Long long time ago, there was a doctor who had an insatiable desire for knowledge.In order to know everything about the world, he made a transaction with the devil who owned the power to satisfy his crazy ambition. As the expense, he had to sell his soul to the devil. With the help of the devil, he at last conquered the war, won in the politics and even owned a beautiful wife. Just when he was beginning to enjoy the life he had long been dreaming of, the devil came to claim his award and took his soul away. At last, the doctor turned out to be a hollow man without soul.

May be you have heard about the story. Yes, the doctor’s name is Faustus, a role created by Christopher Marlow hundreds of years ago, and a role which is now regarded as greedy, crazy, irrational or any other words that equal to the word absurdity. However, ladies and gentlemen, aren’t we, the so called modern people, Mr. and Mrs. Faustus? Isn’t our endless pursuit for advanced technology like the ridiculous transaction made between the devil and Dr. Faustus, by which we confidently believe that we have conquered the whole world, but for which we have lost our souls on the never ending road of pursuing high-technology.

So, ladies and gentlemen, let me state a fact that has long been forgotten: development of technology should be humanism oriented. The original purpose of technology, such as the invention of rice cookery and washing machine, was to liberate humanity from labor, so that we would have more time and energy to enjoy our lives. However, on the contrary, with the high speed development of technology, in this digital world, we find at last that we are too busy to care for our own needs and feelings. To make it worse, our living environment is now threatened by technology, the air is polluted by vehicle emission, and the soil is poisoned by nondecomposable batteries. Technology has become a curse of devil. 

Fortunately, I’m happy to see that in today’s technologically advanced world, people began to realize the guiding role of humanism in technology. In some cities, human needs are put into priority in blueprint planning; advanced technology and management are employed to protect culture and human heritage. Science and technology is drawing back towards the right position it ought to be.

To summarize, in the history of human civilization, humanism once played the role of driven force of technology. In today’s world as well as in the future, no matter how advanced it develops, technology should serve for humanism rather than deviate from it. Let’s treat humanism as guidance, and thus steer technology in the direction of a road to paradise.